“What we’ve seen in the Trump-era is that a lot of the people on the fringes see opportunities for political engagement where they didn’t see it before,” said Berger. “The question is: what happens when that window closes?”
Coupled with increased frustration by the limitations of political engagement comes the rise of more terroristic groups such as Atomwaffen Division, a militant neo-Nazi group linked to several murders. They and others have brought a less hierarchical and more disorderly structure to white supremacist activism, which makes them both harder to track and to control. Known as “leaderless resistance”, it has been a tactic of white supremacists for decades and lead to events such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but has been made exponentially easier by the internet.
“Leaderless resistance totally changes recruitment strategy,” said Belew.
“No longer is the movement trying to generate a mass protest of uniformed members. This movement isn’t interested in a crowd but in a dedicated cell of 12 people that are going to devote their lives to guerrilla warfare.”
theguardian.com
